President-elect Donald Trump fired off Sunday morning with a Tweetstorm (after again complaining about the “totally biased, not funny ” Saturday Night Live), and in a series of six tweets threatened heavy taxes as “retribution” for U.S. companies that move their business operations overseas, fire US workers and still try to sell their product to Americans. Trump vowed he would slap a 35% tax on products sold inside the U.S. by any business that fired American workers and built a new factory or plant in another country.

The president-elect tweeted that his administration will “substantially reduce taxes and regulations on businesses. But any business that leaves our country for another country,” he added, “fires its employees, builds a new factory or plant in the other country, and then thinks it will sell its product back into the U.S. ……without retribution or consequence, is WRONG!”

Trump said there will be a 35 percent tax on the country’s “soon to be strong border” for companies that leave and then want to sell their products back to U.S. consumers. “This tax will make leaving financially difficult, but…..these companies are able to move between all 50 states, with no tax or tariff being charged,” the president-elect tweeted.

So, the US President-elect is threatening to take action against USA companies that make business-moves overseas. Donald Trump will break many promises. But some he will try to keep. This tariff threat may get some US executives to think twice before moving some manufacturing jobs out of the USA.

Over in the UK, its Boris Johnson laid out some of his position on European tariff threats because of the Brexit vote:

4 December 2016

The UK should not have to pay “large” sums to the EU to trade with it after Brexit, Boris Johnson has said.

The idea of the UK paying for tariff-free access to the EU’s internal market has been mooted in recent days.

The foreign secretary told the BBC’s Andrew Marr that the question of whether the UK would pay anything at all was “pure speculation”, but if it did, any payments had to be “sensible”.

Critics say leaving the single market would be an “act of self-harm”. …

Pressed on suggestions by his cabinet colleague, the Brexit secretary David Davis, that the UK could pay for tariff-free access to the single market, Mr Johnson – who was a prominent Leave campaigner – said he was not “going to get into the minutiae” before negotiations began.

“That is something that obviously David Davis is considering. It doesn’t mean that a decision has been taken,” he said. …

But he hinted that this would not extend to actually paying to have to access to the common rules of the single market, without any penalties or extra levies.

“I have given you an indication of the kind of payments that I think might be sensible,” he told Andrew Marr.

“My own view is that I see no reason why those payments should be large. And I do see a big opportunity for us to spend the money we are getting back on other priorities.” …

The EU is under pressure in many quarters to drive a hard bargain with the UK but Mr Johnson dismissed suggestions the UK would be punished for voting out.

While I believe that Boris Johnson has overstated the ‘fondness’ that the EU has for the UK, I will state that influential ones in the EU see a decent deal with the UK in the interest of their nation and/or the EU.

Both the USA and UK are talking about tariffs. Tariffs can lead to trade wars, and trade wars can lead to real wars. The Bible teaches that Europe will one day, relatively soon, dominate international trade (cf. Revelation 18).

The situations in the USA and UK will likely drive them closer and end up with some type of trade deal between the two of them. Politically, Donald Trump and the UK may decide this is advantageous.

The EU does not care for various positions of Donald Trump or Boris Johnson. A real war between Europe and the USA (with the UK basically on the USA’s side) will come (Daniel 8:25; 11:39) .

One day Europe will take steps to ‘eliminate the competition’ so to speak (cf. Daniel 8:25; 11:39).